1. Wild Flowers: The Hour of the Season, February 19. Lives were changed when Joseph Jarman (woodwinds and movement), Adam Rudolph (hand drums and percussion) and Oguri (butoh) made a true association for the advancement of creative beings.

2. Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures, September 29.Hamid Drake took the trap kit, bata and def to the outerspheres. Wow. Ralph Jones (woodwinds), Rudolph (percussion and composition) and Oguri (butoh) made their ascent from the floor of the Electric Lodge in Venice to the skies of mind and spirit.

4. Los Angeles producers.Daedelus is flyin’ high. Damn. (See daedelus@dublab.com.) Dntel has new music forthcoming on Plug Research — electro, acoustical love musics. Adlib is only 22 and he’s already made five records. The Global Phlowtations spearhead is freakin’ the chop something wonderful. Sach has me lookin’ out for more than just mixtapes. John Tejada’s latest, The Matrix of Us(De:Focus), is amazing. Is that really techno? — Languis’ Unithematic(www.simballrec.com);Nobody is the best unsung DJ in L.A.

5. Divine Styler. The lyrical bizarre ain’t back; he’s been here from the beginning, and now you can buy what you slept on two years ago, Word Power 2: Directrix (Mo Wax/Beggars Banquet).

13. The Jupiter Affect, Instructions for the Two Ways of Becoming Alice (Eggbert). Sure, I played on this and co-wrote two of the songs. But the still-potent combination of Michael Quercio and Earle Mankey should be reason enough for you fuckers to buy a copy . . .

1. Kirsty MacColl, Tropical Brainstorm (V2 import). On what turned out to be her final recording, Britain’s most delightfully biting songstress added some Cuban and Brazilian to her sweet-’n’-sour pop. She will be missed.

Stew, Guest Host (The Telegraph Company). Paul Simon’s odes to New York were more affectionate. But then, they were about New York.

Not-Pop:

Cale/Conrad/MacLise/Young/Zazeela, Inside the Dream Syndicate Volume 1: Day of Niagara (1965) (Table of the Elements). Hard to listen to, harder to ignore. Minimalism — that is, music stripped of everything but music.

Ned Rothenberg, Ghost Stories (Tzadik). A slow stroll down a snow-dream, with shakuhachi.

The Caretaker, Selected Memories From the Haunted Ballroom (Offal). A memory carousel on Atlantis, continuing to spin and sing as it sinks . . .

Clint Mansell, Requiem for a Dream original soundtrack (Nonesuch). The movie is the cinematic equivalent of being addicted. The music is a grueling, gorgeous prayer for release.

Live:

Sleater-Kinney at El Rey. Still rock & roll fun, even if the songs aren’t.

Robert Earl Keen (and fans) at the Roxy.Rocky Horror à la Texas, plus song-stories with payoffs and the best Lone Star band since Buddy Holly’s.

Wire at El Rey. Scarier than your dad.

Eels at the Roxy. Carnival with tinfoil turbans and trombones.

Richard Shindell at McCabe’s. So that yuppies-in-traffic song is meant to be funny. Color me relieved.

2. N’Sync at the MTV Video Music Awards. The hardest-working girl-boys in popville literally dancing with themselves on television. (Runners-up: Britney’s VMA strip, Christina getting in touch with her Ecuadorian roots at the Latin Grammys, Backstreet Boy Howie’s new hair.)

3. OutKast, “B.O.B.” (Arista). What OutKast does best — smarter-than-thou Ponch-and-Jon dialectics, Atlanta speed-drawling, hard and hot digi-grind funk stink — boiled down to a few minutes and a gospel choir. Cash Money without the guilt.

4. Shelby Lynne, I Am Shelby Lynne (Island). Wherein an alt-country singer wakes up a chiseled and gutsy Northern soul siren and reincarnates Dusty Springfield (especially Memphis Dusty) just when she had the nerve to leave us.

6. Travis, “Baby One More Time” (Sony). Besides the pleasure of hearing U.K. gloom having an honest laugh, you get to hear just how good the Britney song really is.

7. Sammy Davis Jr. and Jane and Burt Boyar, Sammy: An Autobiography (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The one-stop Sammy bible is finally here: Yes I Can and Why Me? cobbled together into a black-and-Jewish, cocktails-and-Kennedys version of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol.

8. Nelly, Country Grammar (Universal). Repulsion/desire album of the year. Not since R. Kelly sang “You remind me of my jeep” have I loved something I shouldn’t with such vigor.

9. Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker (Bloodshot). A thing of beauty, if beauty gets drunk, gets angry, sings with Emmylou Harris, steals your records, pays tribute to Morrissey, repents, then does it all over again.

10. Amores Perros (Lions Gate). A generation-defining film with a generation-defining soundtrack: Mexico City’s Rebel Without a Cause/Saturday Night Fever/Boyz N the Hood/Kids for avant-minded rockeros and their disgruntled parents.

OLIVER WANG’S HIGHS N LOWS IN THE 2-0

1. Aimee Mann, Bachelor No. 2 (Super Ego). Mann’s full-length revamping of her former EP was the only album that made it from start to finish without me reaching for the FF button. Plus, homegirl earns bonus points for sampling the drum break from the Afro-Lafayette Band’s “Hihache” on “Red Vines.”

7. George Jones at Cerritos Center. Despite tearing up his liver in that DUI wreck, the 68-year-old Jones roared through an impeccable set that had the mostly senior attendees alternately rocking and weeping. Masterly.

8. Hank Williams, Alone With His Guitar (Mercury). It’s positively startling to hear an almost all-new set from Hank Sr., and he does not disappoint.

9. Red Simpson at Viva Fresh. The Bard of Bakersfield’s first visit to Los Angeles in almost 10 years proved (again) that he is both one of California’s best songwriters and one of its most extremely stylized guitarists.

10. Hank Penny, Crazy Rhythm: The Standard Transcriptions (Bloodshot). Jazz-bent Alabaman Penny always used a wry and discerning approach, as this set of old faves and off-the-beaten-track cover tunes makes delightfully clear.

Happiest first appearance:English tenor Ian Bostridge, in oratorio, chamber music and art song, with the Philharmonic and in Costa Mesa’s lively, adventurous Eclectic Orange Festival.

Favorite color, by the way: (Eclectic) orange.

Most undeserving victim of another color:The Philharmonic’s enterprising Green Umbrella series, cut back from seven to five and moved from Little Tokyo to the new Zipper auditorium, too far removed from all the great sushi, shabu-shabu and soba.

Best new space, otherwise:The Colburn School’s Zipper Concert Hall, the right size for chamber music, acoustically many steps up from the Japan America Theater, but physically many steps up from its designated parking lot a block downhill.

Most convincing proof of the continued value of the recording industry:Olivier Messiaen’s only opera, the powerful St. Francis of Assisi, led (on Deutsche Grammophon) by Kent Nagano, the world’s next great conductor, with José van Dam in the title role he created and now owns.

Continued bravery beyond the call:Michael Milenski’s Long Beach Opera, out to prove that opera and brains can coexist, with a season that offered imaginative mountings of works almost four centuries apart.

Best bang for the buck: The free Sunday-at-6-p.m. concerts at the County Museum, with veteran and upcoming performers in interesting programming.

Worst bang for the buck: The L.A. Opera’s drab revival of the fine Herb Ross production of La Bohème, with nary a tear shed onstage or out front, and priced at a $148 top.

Even sadder bang: On Decca/Philips, a new recording of La Bohème, with Andrea Bocelli as Rodolfo, which could pass for parody if it weren’t so flagrantly misguided. Zubin (“Take the Money and Run”) Mehta conducts.

2. Biggest “alternative” teen-market jerk-off: Feeble Rage/NIN-derived “nu-metal” outfits on major labels with butt-ugly creepz in their late 20s/early 30s singing about midteen alienation all dolled-up in goatees, piercings, designer tats and fake braids while their goofy little SoCal punk-pop brothers sing zany ditties in fake English accents about porno and farting.

3. Biggest mainstream PR/mass-marketing bullshit:Madonna wears a rhinestone-cowgrrrl Nashville Pussy hat, the same style bartending stripper gals have worn for years, and is instantly “reinvented” one more time (as what is unclear), while Bono’s wearing of wraparound shades after dark “reinvents” the namby-pamby “spiritual” folk-pop lite of U2.

4. Biggest relief:Billy Corgan finally throws in the S.P. towel. Adding even more layered Mellotrons to variations of the same bad Nirvana songs and re-hiring Jimmy Chamberlin did nothing.

5. Biggest embarrassment: After cynically decrying the proliferation of retro Rocky Horror–era–themed rock clubs for 714/818 weekend dragsters, I get caught red-handed at one myself. I tried not to watch former Runaways Cherie Currie and Sandy West doing a spot at Cherry’s sixth anniversary, but it was too late. I’m riveted, I’m caught, suctioned into guilty nostalgia. They rocked and looked great backed by Jackie Beat’s regular guys doubling as the Make Up house band.

6. Silliest professional whoring DJ experience: Being asked to change what I’m doing to “you know, like ’80s music” as I jam on my big crowd-pandering megamix medley of Prince/Paisley Park classics while the dance floor is bumpin’ full on at a private house party in Bel Air.

7. Dumbest new fashion: Shoegazers in Isros?

JAY BABCOCK’S LUCKIEST DOZEN

12. Ol’ Dirty Bastard Saga: In just the last two months, ODB did a runner from Impact House’s Pasadena branch, evaded the police to perform onstage in New York with the Wu, and was arrested in a McDonald’s parking lot in South Philadelphia after offering cops his autograph. More rock & roll than Jerry Lee Lewis ever was.

4. Keep It Simple:AC/DC’s Stiff Upper Lip(EastWest America) and The White Stripes’ De Stijl(Sympathy for the Record Industry).

3. Ghostface Killah: His Supreme Clientele (Razor Sharp) may just be the best Wu-Tang Clan solo album ever; his weep-raps on the Wu’s The W (Loud) cemented his standing as the group’s heartbreaker.

2. Sigur Ros: In a category of their own making. Ten-minute dream epics with bowed guitar and othersexed lead vocals. From Iceland, not chilly at all.

1. OutKast gave us the year’s best album (Stankonia), best radio single (“Ms. Jackson”), and best 240 televised seconds (“Bombs Over Baghdad” performed live on the Letterman show with full Parliament getup, choir, dancers and live guitars — stanky!).

FALLING JAMES’ TOP 10 TECTONIC SHIFTS

1. A surprising breakup by Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948. They really coulda been contenders, and now there’s almost no proof they existed. The year’s biggest musical tragedy.

2. Manu Chao & Radio Bemba Sound System at the Palace. All hail the king of bongo.

Cynics who say things like “The scene ain’t as exciting as it used to be back in 1977/1965/1929” weren’t often visible at this year’s plenitude of cool shows by all of the above and: Dead Moon, Julieta Venegas, Daniel Johnston, Patti Smith, Vice Squad, W.A.C.O., Leather Hyman, Eleni Mandell, Tammy Faye Starlite & the Angels of Mercy, Cheap Trick at the County Fair, the Beautys, Cobra Verde, the Real McKenzies, Cecilia Bastida rejoining Tijuana No!, the Short Fuses, Devics, the 440’s, the Chicken Hawks, the Reds, No Means No, the Pinkos and the Pinkz, the Starvations, the Bobbyteens, the Real Kids, Saccharine Trust, the Dagons and the Dragons, Giant Sand, Backbiter, Aztlan Underground, the BellRays, the Skulls, the Dogs, Mike Watt & Pair of Pliers, the Zeros, Project K, the Go-Go’s, B-52’s, Popdefect, the Dictators, the Bangs and the Bangles within weeks of each other at Spaceland, Betty Blowtorch, the Excessories, Calavera, the Vice Principals, the Humpers, Snap-Her, Urinals, the Paper Tulips, Lutefisk, the Pretenders, Neil Young, the Lisa Marr Experiment, and quite a few others. Free Arthur Lee!